Gemalto, whose solutions for mobile financial services are deployed at over 70 customers worldwide, demonstrated outstanding performance and scalability using a clustered environment on a mid-range 2x2.85GHz T4-2 Server (16 cores total, 128GB memory) for the application tier, and an additional dedicated Intel-based (2x3.2GHz Intel-Xeon X4200) Oracle database server. The platform processed more than 1,000 transactions per second, limited only by database capacity. Near linear scalability was observed by increasing the number of application software components in the cluster. Results show an increase of nearly 300% in processing power and capacity on the new T4-based servers.

An Oracle special edition of "Server Virtualization for Dummies eBook" is available for download, according to a post by Monica Kumar, whose post states, "to learn more about how Oracles server virtualization solutions can help you eliminate complexity, reduce costs, and respond rapidly to changing needs, download Server Virtualization for Dummies.

It was the case that customers with a mixture of T2, T2+, T3 and T4 systems could not freely move domains between systems. That is, before the release of Oracle VM Server for SPARC 2.2, the advent of which now enables migrations running domains between T-series servers with different chip types and clock frequencies. Jeff Savit contends in his post that this release enhances operational flexibility and lets domain migration be used in a wider set of use-cases.

Having discovered considerable unfamiliarity with the features of Oracle VM among the Oracle installed base, Wim Coekaerts has posted a summary of the features of Oracle VM including such aspects as price, support subscriptions, API, cli, UI, cloud portal, monitoring or management, roles and responsibilities, centralized account management -- all of which are features of Oracle VM and all of which enable the solution to outstrip the competition.

"Floods in central Thailand last October knocked out 25 percent of the world's hard drive manufacturing capability. Western Digital's plant in Ayutthaya was completely inundated. It took seven weeks to start production again. By contrast, Seagate's plant in Thailand wasn't in the flood plain, but several of its subcomponent suppliers took a hard hit.

With thin supply stocks and high demand, hard drive prices went through the roof. Then a bit of sanity prevailed and prices settled back -- a bit..."

"The promise of cost-effective data management is driving many organizations toward enterprise information archives (EIA). According to a December 2011 poll by Gartner, 20% of respondents had already implemented on-premise EIAs and 25% indicated they were looking into implementing them. Additionally, 10%of the respondents indicated they had implemented cloud-based EIA, while another 20% said they were considering cloud-based EIA..."

"Rules-based core systems have been a boon to the insurance industry but they on a life of their own and can create downstream problems if they are not properly governed and vetted for consistency. That point came up during multiple conversations held during the ACORD LOMA Systems Forum in Orlando, Fla., last week with I&T's editors and various industry participants..."

"Videoconferencing, unified communications, and shared editing don't work the way people do ...

Sometimes, the future won't go away, even though it also doesn't actually transpire. Case in point: I've been a technology writer and editor for nearly 30 years and have yet to see the promised utopia of collaborative computing. This is the same future that envisioned flying cars and undersea cities, mind you. Just as those don't exist, neither does the virtual collaboration vision in which we're all videoconferencing from anywhere while working on the same documents and projects together in real time..."

"The 2012 Atlantic hurricane season, which officially begins June 1, is likely to be relatively mild compared to recent years. But even a less-active season or a Category 1 storm places tremendous demands on insurance companies in terms of risk modeling and underwriting, catastrophe response and claims management/payments. Heres a review of some of the key technologies and tools insurers must have in their arsenals to provide the right levels of service during the 2012 hurricane season..."

Customers moving from earlier versions of Oracle Solaris will discover that Oracle Solaris 11 facilitates the transition process by providing tools for infrastructure migration, blogs Terri Wischmann, as well as application workload transition. The post also includes a number of links useful to migrating users. Among them:

How to Guide: How to Set-up Automated Installation Services for Oracle Solaris 11

Cheat Sheet: Installation and Deployment Administration

How to Guide: How to Live Install from Oracle Solaris 10 to Oracle Solaris 11 11/11

Using the flexAsynch benchmark MySQL Cluster 7.2 delivered 1.2 billion update operations per minute across a cluster of 30 x commodity Intel Xeon E5-based servers, Mat Keep reports. FlexAsynch is an open source, highly adaptable test suite that can be downloaded as part of the MySQL Cluster source tarball, according to Keep. An automated tool is available to run the benchmark, he continues, with full instructions documented in the README file. The tarball also includes the scripts to run the benchmark, and are further described on the MySQL benchmark page. Keep explains how to use flexAsynch performance evaluations.

The scalability enhancements delivered by extensions to multi-threaded data nodes enable MySQL Cluster 7.2 to deliver over 8x higher performance than the previous MySQL Cluster 7.1 release, Mat Keep posts. As a result, he continues, the multi-threaded data node extensions not only serve to increase performance of MySQL Cluster, they also enable users to achieve significantly improved levels of utilization from current and future generations of massively multi-core, multi-thread processor designs. Keep enumerates the next generation web services enabled by the release and notes the improvements in cross datacenter scalability and ease of use.

"Coupa, a 2006 startup that helps more than 200 customer companies manage purchasing and procurement, doesn't own any IT infrastructure -- it is run completely from the Amazon Web Service cloud.

Business applications don't get much more mission-critical than a company's entire operations, and Sanket Naik, who leads Coupa's cloud strategy, isn't worried about being all-in with AWS, with backup capacity in other clouds, such as Rackspace..."

"Today's business environment is truly globaland that means its highly competitive and getting more so as the emerging economies flex their muscles. Cost pressures are unremitting and the demand for uninterrupted services and higher levels of personalised service than ever before has become the norm.

In order to enable organizations to compete effectively in this demanding marketplace, CIOs are looking for increasing levels of performance from their infrastructure ..."

The research, by the Cloud Legal Project at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies at Queen Mary, is primarily based on in-depth interviews with global and UK cloud providers, cloud users, law firms and other market players..."

"Security is one of (if not THE) top concern companies and users have with cloud computing. The issue of cloud security, however, is much more complex than simply is the cloud secure or not. A cloud-based application can be hosted in a secure environment, with properly encrypted data and everything, and an attacker can still get access to your information through social engineering. On the other hand, you can have the most secure password policies in the world, but if the hosting environment gets hacked, you are still going to lose your data..."

"Enterprises that use cloud computing resources must often retrofit management after the fact. Don't be those guys ...

It's clear how public cloud computing is used today by larger enterprises: It's a storage system here, an API providing data there, and cloud-delivered app dev testing somewhere else. However, what's almost never apparent is how these providers should be managed to the right level of operational efficiency..."

While the benefits of WAN Virtualization for the Enterprise WAN itself  far greater bandwidth, far lower monthly costs, greater reliability and application performance predictability, sacrifice-free centralization of network complexity and reduced troubleshooting costs  are quite substantial on their own, and in the shorter term alone justify its deployment, when combined with colocation and the other key technologies of the Next-generation Enterprise WAN (NEW) architecture, the benefits for security and computing are ultimately potentially even greater, if for no other reason than that most every enterprise IT shop spends far more on computing plus security than it does on the network itself..."

"Cloud storage is taking off, but when it comes to online backups, IT still has concerns...

Cloud storage is taking off, but when it comes to backing up data online for disaster recovery, it may not be a perfect solution. To learn about whats concerning IT for using this technology for DR, we turned to Brian Findlay, director of global storage at Imation Scalable Storage; his group encompasses the companys traditional as well as secure and scalable storage business..."

"One of the toughest parts about implementing a cloud strategy isn't choosing the underlying technology to power the deployment; it's having the processes in place to manage an effective migration to the cloud, says Thomas Bittman, a cloud analyst for Gartner.

"While cloud technologies are just now maturing, that's one of the easier challenges to solve," Bittman said during a webinar sponsored by Gartner discussing how to build private clouds..."

"CIOs are becoming more prominent corporate leaders, and the decisions they make are having a broader impact on companies beyond the IT team, according to a recent survey from the Harvey Nash Group and TelecityGroup. The CIO Survey 2012 explores how IT leaders feel about issues ranging from budgeting trends to staffing struggles, workplace diversity and corporate cultures. The report reveals that the CIO, along with the rest of the IT team, continues to play a greater role in the success of today's organizations..."

"Is your company's IT training stuck in the 'same old' rut? Here are some tips to make sure employees get the most out of your IT training dollars...

Faced with tighter training budgets, many IT leaders are looking for new ways to develop their workforces. However, many businesses are realizing that 'the old training methods just don't work anymore,' said Tom Graunke, founder and chief storyteller at Arizona-based IT training firm StormWind. Forget about courses that drag on for days. According to Graunke, there are four ways companies can supercharge their IT training modules for maximum impact..."

"Making the case against an insider takes preparation and proactive work with HR and legal...

When the worst-case scenario strikes and a malicious insider does damage to an organization, be it by theft or sabotage, legal recourse may be in order. But if IT doesn't prepare in advance to cooperate with human resources and legal, the civil or criminal case against a bad former employee may be doomed from the start.

According to security and legal experts, failing to cover your legal bases before presenting your case to judge and jury can effectively give the defendant that proverbial "get-out-of-jail-free card" and leave your organization without much leverage at all..."

"CIOs can expect their jobs to change dramatically by the decade's end, with increased roles in business planning, cyber security, robot management and, of course, the cloud ...

At the same time, we also know that technology will change dramatically. Who could have predicted even 10 years ago that the CIO would have to deal with complications such as cloud security and virtualization? To find out how the role will change in eight years, we tapped industry leaders, analysts, and CIOs themselves to discover what the challenges of 2020 for the CIO will be like. Here's what we found out..."

"Anti-fraud consultancy UKFraud.co.uk has published a list of 10 common early warning signs that could alert management that fraud may be occurring in their organization. The list draws upon UKFRAUD.co.uks substantial experience across an international client base, ranging from major financial institutions, public sector bodies and corporations to SMEs and non-profit making organizations. The list works on the assumption that whatever tools they use, be it IT-based cons and false accounting or other traditional scams, the warning signs are often the same..."

"Does your manager proactively and intelligently plans for your professional development and career advancement? Or does he or she essentially go on autopilot--or simply pay lip service when it comes to evaluations, training exercises, collaboration sessions and other professional development opportunities? It's a serious situation, as organizations struggle to recruit and develop those in scientific, technology, engineering and mathematical (STEM) fields..."

"The way customers interact with companies is changing dramatically, largely because of the rapid emergence of social media and mobile devices. At the same time, consumersthanks in part to the Internethave become much more discerning and knowledgeable about service quality and market alternatives..."

Disaster recovery plans are an essential element for any organization, and mobile security services are taking an increasingly prominent place in those plans, according to a survey from network operator AT&T, which found six out of 10 (60 percent) invest in mobile security services, with the majority (69 percent) indicating potential security breaches as the most pressing concern..."

"Managers often find themselves placed in the role of project managers (PMs), but they don't have the right skills to succeed at the job. Sometimes they miss critical steps because they lack insight into PM methodology. In the book 'Project Management for Non-Project Managers' (Amacom/Available in April), author Jack Ferraro provides insight to guide individuals who are managing projects without PM training find their way..."

"In case you haven't been glued to the Internet Society (ISOC) website, there soon will be some rather large changes to the Internet as the much anticipated World IPv6 Launch day arrives on June 6. I see this as much more hype than operationally a change.

While many large organizations have hooked their plans on change over to the ISOC launch date, legions of companies have already been leveraging IPv6 WAN connectivity. Most mobile providers who have adopted LTE 4G infrastructures have built around this networking principle already with mobile devices, by default, connecting to the Internet via IPv6 assignments..."

"The Internet Society is promoting the World IPv6 Launch on June 6, when Internet service providers, hardware manufacturers and Web-based companies will permanently enable the next generation of Internet Protocols on their products and services.

This move is voluntary, but it also is inevitable as the worlds supply of new IPv4 addresses runs dry and new customers and devices coming online begin using the new addresses. The focus of the transition so far has been turning on the new protocols, but some people already are turning their thoughts to the need to turn off IPv4, which has served the Internet well since its inception..."

Enterprises are evolving their data centers through consolidation, virtualization, data protection, and into cloud services. A key business driver for enterprises is the need to manage growth with lower costs by being more efficient. Moving expenses from less flexible capital expenses to on-demand operating expenses is now a new option for data center infrastructure based services..."

"The Obama administration and a private-sector working group have announced a cooperative initiative to combat malicious botnets, which are being called a growing threat to the online economy and national security.

The Industry Botnet Group and the Homeland Security and Commerce departments released on May 30 a set of principles for addressing the challenge of botnets across the entire Internet ecosystem. In addition to this framework for collaboration, the government also will step up public outreach efforts to educate users about online threats and will coordinate efforts to address the technical threats posed by botnets.

On May 30, the National Institute of Standards and Technology hosted a workshop on the technical aspects of botnet activity, aimed at disrupting the botnet life cycle and removing malicious code on compromised devices."

"Researchers at the University of Cambridge have found evidence that Chinese manufacturers are putting backdoors in FPGA (field-programmable gate array) chips used by the US military.

The research was conducted in response to claims by intelligence agencies around the world that the silicon chips that run their defence systems are vulnerable to Trojans. Considerable investment has been made in software computer networks and system defences to detect and eradicate such threats, but similar technology for hardware is not currently available..."

"When companies detect a possible threat or vulnerability, determining what the impact may be and how to mitigate the threat is not so easy in today's complex networks.

In a simple environment, such questions are easy. But not so in the complex enterprise environment with hundreds of thousands of systems and hundreds of network security controls, such as access control lists, firewall rules, and intrusion-prevention systems, says Jody Brazil, president and chief technology officer for FireMon..."

"Drawing upon a wealth of experience from academia, industry, and government service, Cyber Security Policy Guidebook details and dissects, in simple language, current organizational cyber security policy issues on a global scale - taking great care to educate readers on the history and current approaches to the security of cyberspace.

It includes thorough descriptionsas well as the pros and cons - of a plethora of issues, and documents policy alternatives for the sake of clarity with respect to policy alone..."

"Employee monitoring through social media platforms can improve security, but it raises important ethical and legal considerations, a Gartner report indicates...

It might be worth thinking about keeping your friends close, but keeping your Facebook friends carefully cordoned off from the eyes of your employers, if a recent report from IT research firm Gartner is any indication. The study found that corporate monitoring of employee behavior on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn will rise to 60% by 2015, as businesses look to crack down on possible security breaches and incidents..."

"Approaching its 60th birthday, the National Security Agency (NSA) has a staff some 35,000 strong worldwide, and an impressive building complex in Fort Meade, Md., where the walls are lined with copper mesh to prevent electronic eavesdropping. True to its origins dating back to breaking enemy code during World War II, the agency has two primary missions: signals Intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance (IA).

Although the NSA is typically depicted as the most super-secret of federal agencies, it does post valuable reports on security best practices on its Web site. And Neal Ziring, the NSA's technical director of the Information Assurance Directorate (IAD), recently agreed to an in-depth interview..."

"As the U.K. prepares to begin enforcing its version of the European Union's E-Privacy Directive later this week, the 27-member nations of the E.U. are considering new draft legislation that would reform and harmonize data protection laws...

the U.K. will begin to enforce the amended Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communicationsbetter known as the E-Privacy Directive-which it passed last year. Meanwhile, all 27 member nations of the economic and political confederation are debating much broader draft legislation, introduced by the European Commission (E.C.) in January, which would reform and harmonize data protection laws across the E.U..."

"Misconceptions and misunderstandings abound when it comes to insider threats. Many organizations fail to identify the scope and severity of risk posed by insiders because they adhere to mistaken beliefs about what kind of insiders present danger to their organizations and how. Similarly, misapprehension about security controls further adds to misapplied mitigation efforts.

If organizations are to work on reducing insider risks, then they first need to bust the myths around them that could be holding back their progress..."

"When a family with a baby buys a new car, they don't buy a car seat from the vehicle manufacturer: There is specialized equipment to handle the family's most sensitive asset. John Pescatore, a Gartner vice president and security analyst, says cloud security can be thought of in a similar way: Users shouldn't rely on their cloud service provider's security features to protect their most critical data..."

"As is the case with family members, we can't choose our co-workers. So we all just have to do our best to get along, right? However, not everyone is on their best behavior while at work. Some people are prone to making invasive noises. Others are downright dirty in the kitchen. Some even seem like space aliens doing their best to mimic human behavior - and failing miserably..."

"Feel like you're shackled to your work and theres no way to take a real vacation? You may be able to salvage a little downtime by following these tips...

It's a well-known fact that Americans work too much and play too little. Too many workers never vacation and are tied to their jobs, feeling like they simply cant get away. This is bad for both the employee and the organization, as burned out, stressed out employees can't give it their all...

In today's workplace, if you expect flexibility from your employer, you'll need to give it, too. So, understanding that you need to know when to choose your battles, let's begin..."

In the interest of full disclosure, I am fluent in 'nerd.' I have an engineering degree and years of experience working on technical projects. I know the purpose of a processor reset pin, why "i" is the most common loop counter for software developers, and the purpose of a debounce function in a keyboard driver..."

"A host of European data protection organisations are failing to adhere to the new cookie legislation that came into force in the UK over the weekend and his been law for over a year, despite creating the new legislation.

The EC's central website, as well as the Article 29 Working Party - the cross-nation committee of data protection enforcement organisations - and the European Data Protection Supervisors' website all fail to provide any permission systems to users..."

"Auditors and compliance managers alike are depending on firewall management principles and tools to cut through the complexity ...

As the complexity of the IT topography continues to increase along with the number of firewalls deployed, the typical enterprise firewall rule set stands as a confusing rat's nest of contradictions and insecure configurations.

Not only does the state of these rules expose enterprises to undue risk, it inevitably throws it out of compliance. Auditors are getting wise to the problems posed by unmanaged firewall rules. Here's why you should, too..."

"The recent success authorities have had in taking down dangerous botnets has helped drive down the amount of spam flooding into business and consumer email accounts. In a report on security in 2011 released late last year, Cisco Systems found a 'steep decline' in the volume of spam since August 2010, with the number of spam messages falling from 379 billion a day to 124 billion. And the picture was pretty good in the United States, which dropped from being the No. 1 source for spam in 2010 to No. 9 in 2011, according to Cisco..."

"The term 'Big Data' is a too-often used buzzword to mean many things in many different industries. In business analytics, Big Data often means using the information that the business received from customers, sales forecast, suppliers and many other inputs to make optimal decisions about the direction for the business, both short and long term. Commodities traders might use Big Data in a completely different way -- perhaps they would seek analytics from climate data, which requires looking at satellite and other image data along with textual information -- to decide what trades to make long or short..."

"Mobile workers are finding it more difficult than ever to disconnect from their devices. And the constant checking and sending of messages is causing problems with their spouses, kids and other loved ones, according to the recently released 'Mobile Workforce Report' survey from iPass. While work responsibilities remain a driving factor here, many survey participants confess that they're on their smartphones and tablets incessantly for no particularly important reasons..."

"Many organizations still consider BYOD an all-or-nothing proposition -- adopt a draconian policy with network access whatsoever or let everyone connect with any type of device. When most organizations end up granting network access, they do so with no business alignment. In other words, there are no business objectives, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), or strategic plans for future business advancement. Rather, everyone gets access under the vague notion that mobile devices will somehow make employees more productive..."

With the release of LibreOffice 3.5.4, the fifth version of the free office suites 3.5 family, the Document Foundation announces performance improvements of up to 100% over earlier versions. These improvements are attributed to the combined result of the many code optimizations executed during the last months and the bug and regression chasing activity performed regularly by volunteers and developers. LibreOffice 3.5.4 is now the fastest version of the best free office suite ever.

A post on Raghuram Kothakota's blog shows how, in three simple steps, one can configure a Virtual Function (VF) so that VNICs can be created on top of the VF device. This done, it becomes possible for an OVM Server for SPARC (aka LDoms) 2.2 to provide support for an SR-IOV VF that can be assigned to a Logical Domain. This VF will provide bare-metal-like performance, the post asserts, and then goes on to outline the three simple steps.

NetBeans IDE 7.2 Beta, newly released as noted in a post by Geertjan Wielenga, provides a significantly improved performance and coding experience, with new static code analysis capabilities in the Java Editor and smarter project scanning. The release also includes notable features such as integration with Scene Builder for visually creating JavaFX forms; support for multiple PHP frameworks; updated Groovy support; and many other enhancements in Java EE, Maven, C/C++ and the NetBeans Platform, Wielenga writes. He adds the observation that the NetBeans project is supported by a vibrant developer community and offers extensive documentation and training resources.